ON 24TH AND 25TH NOVEMBER 2014 – just over a year since the successful National Conference in Johannesburg – about 90 activists from the One Million Climate Jobs Campaign met in Cape Town to talk about the past year, what we have achieved, and the way forward. All the activists in the workshop had actively engaged people in communities and workplaces in the process of collecting 60 000 signatures for petition campaign and were able to share experiences of talking to them about climate change, how it was already affecting them, and where they saw the possibilities for climate jobs. A NUMBER OF COMMON THEMES emerged as delegates talked about their experiences. Climate change is deepening the problems of inadequate services in communities. For example, gravel roads in Limpopo turn into thick mud when it rains making it impossible for busses to carry people to work. With more unpredictable rainfalls and flooding, this problem is becoming worse. mining of coal, as well as other mining activity, is having a devastating effect on the environment. It is also affecting local food production. In parts of Mpumalanga, for instance, food production is affected by mining activities, which pollutes the land and uses up vast quantities of water. In other parts of the province food production is severely limited by the huge forestry plantations that have been established. Food security and increasing food prices came up again and again. This is one of the starkest impacts that climate change is already having on our lives – it is affecting food production, causing food prices to rise, and thus undermining food security. The commercialisation of water and electricity is seriously limiting access of working class communities to these vital basic needs. There was a strong call for water and electricity to be delivered as public services, based on the principle of meeting a public need. THE WORKSHOP LAID THE BASIS FOR taking the campaign forward in 2015. That work will be focused around the question: “In our area, how can we most effectively mobilize for climate jobs to be created to deal with the very real impacts of climate change that we are already seeing?” THE WORKSHOP CONCLUDED BY affirming that: Through the One Million Climate Jobs Campaign we are striving to build unity among a range of different organizations around our demand for a million climate jobs. We need to deepen the understanding of climate change and how it relates to struggles, demands and issues in our communities through a process of popular education throughout the country. In 2015, we will take forward the campaign in each centre where signatures have been collected by mobilizing for the creation of climate jobs to meet local needs. NEXT YEAR IS AN IMPORTANT YEAR FOR climate job activists. At the end of the year, in Paris, France, heads of state will meet at COP21, ostensibly with the aim of reaching a binding and universal agreement on greenhouse gas emissions and climate issues more generally. Understandably, skepticism abounds regarding their capacity to do something they have failed to do for 20 years. The best hope for an agreement lies in the pressure that communities and workplaces around the world can put on their governments to take climate change seriously and to do something meaningful about it.